In her article for Canada’s National Post’s Full Comment, Kelly McParland says:
“Venezuela has become the basket case of the western hemisphere, a case study on how not to run a country and a living example of what happens when a left-wing government is let loose with utopian economics. The cruel irony is that Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves — 298 billion barrels —the raw material on which to build a pleasant and prosperous nation. Yet it recently began importing oil from the U.S., a country it has spent a decade deriding as a mortal enemy.”
And this was written in May. After another four months the country seems in full blown crisis mode.
Of course, those sympathetic to Chavez, his replacement Maduro and command economies will blame anything but central planning.
We’ve already heard murmurs the the drop in oil prices are to blame and this is simply hog wash. Oil prices might have forced Venezuela off the economic cliff, but it was on the way there over the past decade or more.
Without economic freedom, wealth will not be created. One thing history is quite clear on, Socialism does not work.
Wishing things will turn out better under Socialism remains a pipe dream. The devastation it brings is heart breaking yet some people never learn.
